No Sun Shining Through
by Sewer Slider
Summary: Oneshot. They want him to go with them. But should he?


**Authors Note: **I owe a massive debt to Sasshaia, who beta-read for me. This fic has several massive problems, which Sasshaia fixed. All kudos to Sasshaia. All blame goes of course, to me.

I don't own the characters. I just borrow them and give 'em back - hopefully not too damaged!

_&&&&&&&&&&&_

The lair is too big.

Too empty.

Too quiet.

Mike wakes up on the couch, almost falls as he stirs from some terrible dream. The lair is silent, silent. Too long alone.

Silence as he rises. Silence as he prepares a glass of water, goes back to his seat. Silence.

And then, a sound. Something moving, scuttering across the floor. Maybe a rat, a normal rat. Maybe. But louder, bolder.

He doesn't want to look. But he feels compelled to look, to know.

She creeps out of the room he used to use as his bedroom, before he took to staying on the couch in the main area of the lair, before waking in his own room was too much. Looking like some big spider with four legs rather than eight. Her bones broken, poking through her flesh. The limbs twisted unnaturally. Body supported by arms and legs that were snapped and twisted beyond repair.

He looks away hurriedly, pretending she isn't there. Although he can still hear her moving. Looks back when he can't take it anymore. She's on ground level now, staring at him through eyes that manage to be dark and beautiful in spite of the twisted mess that the rest of her has become.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, knowing it will make no difference. That she will always be here.

"You didn't catch me." He can hear the reproach in her voice. "You didn't catch me and I fell so far... "

"It wasn't my fault," he tells her without conviction, looking away. "I didn't know..."

The scratching sound stops. He looks and she has gone again.

&&&&&&&

"_Mike..."_

Not the lair. A building, long since damaged, burned in some accident. Abandoned. Parts of the structure remain, but it's not safe to be here.

Why is he here?

He used to come here all the time. After...

A figure stirs in the fallen rubble that still remains, pushes the debris off himself and emerges. But that's not right. This figure still smoulders with the fire that consumed him the first time.

"_Mikey!"_

His brother, charred and smoking, burned bits of flesh sloughing from his body as he walks forward. Not right. No one could live through that. No one could still burn that way and walk. Or talk.

"Mike..." A finger, the skin burned from the digit and revealing bone, caresses his face. Mike tenses. "You left us..."

"You – no. You left me." Mike's voice is little more than a tremor, terrified. This could not be – yet he could feel the touch, smell the charred flesh and the decay on the breath of his sibling.

"Let me die..."

"I didn't _let _you do anything! You were all alone..."

"Left me alone..."

"_No!_ I tried – help me, I'm sorry, I tried..."

His touch is burning hot and Mikey flinches from it, closes his eyes, breathes the smell of burning skin. But the touch is not repeated and when he opens his eyes, he is all alone.

Again.

&&&&&&&&

The cockroach girl,as he has come to think of her, is in his face again, breathing the sickly-sweet smell of decay into his face. He's on the couch again, lying unable to move, wishing that for one moment she would just leave him alone...

&&&&&&&&

"_Mikey!"_

He opens his eyes to find himself kneeling before his brother, a brother who is bleeding to death Not in the lair. They're in a shop, could be any convenience store in the country. Except that it's empty, save for the two of them.

"Bro, you'll be fine..." He takes off his bandana, wraps it around the wound, grimacing as he sees it. The wound isn't so much a wound as a mess. His brothers arm is missing from above the elbow, blood and gore pouring out too fast to stop.

Still he tries.

"..Letting me die?"

"No! I'm trying... I really am! There's so much blood!"

That look of confusion in his eyes. "Don't you want to save me?"

"I'm _trying_!" Mikey's voice barely more than a sob as he struggles to stem the bleeding. "Don't leave me, please... don't go..."

"You left us," replies his brother maddeningly, closing his eyes, leaving Mike with nothing more than the scent of blood, the overwhelming feeling of hopelessness and the knowledge that he fought this battle alone...

&&&&&&&

The lair again. The Cockroach Girl again. Scuttling around the lair. He can remember her before she looked like this, although he had seen her for maybe a few seconds. She had been on the building, whole, limbs intact. And then she had swan-dived, as if she expected to find water beneath her instead of the cold, hard concrete.

She had been beautiful in the darkness. Before she jumped. He couldn't stop her. He didn't even know her name, had never met her before.

Why did she come back for him, with her bones broken and smashed beyond repair, her face still so oddly whole when the rest of her didn't even look human?

Just another person he couldn't save. This one, he didn't even know her name. To someone else, she might not have been the Cockroach Girl.

&&&&&&

Central Park.

He's been here a hundred times, he was a native of New York after all. But never has it seemed so quiet, so dark. So ominous.

A man lurches out of the darkness.

A man, clutching what might have been a hockey stick, snapped at one end. A man, most of his face obscured by some fluid dripping down from fortunately barely-visible wounds.

A man he knows.

"_Hey buddy."_

Mike backs off, realising how long it's been since the body of the man turned up in this very park, battered almost to death, leaving the hospital to finish the job.

"Let me go home alone," the man says, using the remnants of the stick as a crutch. "Let me go home alone. And look what happened. They got the drop on me. Left me..."

"_I didn't know!" _Mike howls at the man as the darkness from the shadows seems to engulf him...

&&&&&&&

A van.

He blinks as the car motors serenely down the lane, sitting in the passenger seat. He looks to see who's driving – and sees _her._ Mother, sister, confidante.

Just a drive.

He settles back into the seat, trying to gather his thoughts. And then she speaks.

"_Michelangelo..."_

He sits up, looks back at her again. Her face seems to be caved in somehow, her left eye hanging from its socket, her left cheek sunken, that same side of her skull dented and battered. And still, she seems to be trying to smile.

"Left me Mike," she says, her wasted hand reaching for the gearstick. "Left me to travel the streets alone. Left me to take my hands off the wheel..."

"NO!" he shouts, reaching for the emergency brake.

Too late. An SUV swerves into her lane. Rather than take any evasive action, she takes her hands off the wheel, covers her eyes.

But under her hands, he can see her face, frozen in a grimace that looks too much like a smile...

&&&&&&

Awakes in the lair.

Breathing hard, staring at the ceiling. Staring at what has become too much of a familiar sight these days, dirt and cobwebs. No real need to clean. No one comes by here. And he's the only one who lives here, since everyone else died. He has been alone here too long.

Always alone these days. So much to bear. Everyone has left him.

Or has he left them?

He stands, taking a step from the couch where he has rested – and then tripping, falling over something. He lays for a moment, stunned, then rolls over to see what he has fallen over.

His brother, lying prone on the floor.

A whine raises up in Mike's throat, remembering the day he collapsed, that he dies, that he was buried...

His brother grips his arm.

"Left me," whispers his brother, sounding regretful. "Left all of us..."

"You're dead," replies Mike, afraid. "I know you were, I waited – I tried..."

"You lived and we died..."

"Oh, and I'm the lucky one, huh?" Mike's voice takes on a tough edge that he hasn't realised still exists. "I'm here alone, all alone, and you're together... and I get to be here alone forever, without you..."

"_My son..."_

Mike looks up and gasps. Splinter is walking toward them, a Splinter as grey and ashen as he looked the day he keeled over in the lair with no sign of what was wrong save that he was dead...

"Sensei..."

"_My son!"_

He looks down at Leo, lying on the floor where he had expired years before...

"_Michelangelo! Come back!"_

And up again, where Raph emerges from his room, still bearing the scars of the fire that had consumed him...

"_Mikey! Please bro, please!"_

And Donnie, walking from the lab with blood trailing on the floor from where he has lost the arm, the wound that had cost him his life...

"_Dammit! Mike! He's fading! Quick, help me!"_

"What do you want Mike?" Raph's voice is patient and eternally weary. "Come with us... or be left alone?"

"Alone... I – no." Mike shakes his head, trying to get rid of the strange sense of double-hearing. "I want to come with you... don't leave me on my own."

"_Mike!"_

"Quickly then." Splinter offers his hand. "Come with us Mikey – or be left alone forever."

Mike hesitates a second before he put his hand in the rats. "Wait. Sensei, you never call me Mikey. Not ever."

"You prefer it though, my son." Splinter offers a grimace, the closest those dead features can ever come to a smile.

"Not from you."

Mike pulls away and runs. Runs from the lair. Through the sewers, away from the shambling things that are coming for him. Away from it all, until he sees...

&&&&&&

"Mikey!"

He blinks. Donnie is there, obviously weary – and obviously uninjured, both hands there as he hugs his little brother.

"What happened?"

"You were hurt Mike – don't you remember?" Don tries to smile in relief and frown thoughtfully at the same time, a strange experiment in facial expressions.

"You were dead," murmurs Mike, confused. "Dead for years..."

Don frowns. "Just dreams Mikey. Fever dreams."

"No, it was – it's going to be..." He trails off as the memories leave him with nothing more than distorted images. "Donnie..."

"Rest Mikey. Raph and Leo are worried. Sensei too." Don goes to the door and indicates without words, a sure sign that all eyes are on Mike's door.

"He hasn't been right for weeks," he can hear Raphael saying. "Not since that girl killed herself..."

"Raph, hush. He'll hear you." Leo's voice is reasonable but stern, that 'Fearless Leader' tone evident.

But it's Raph who's right. He has been acting strangely. He can't forget the way she looked, in the dark, her eyes so wide and frightened, before she leapt...

Mike sighs, lying back. And is more than glad to see his brothers and father, leading them to wonder exactly why he is so happy to see them.

And a few weeks later, when Splinter succumbed to heart failure, he wasn't surprised. Devastated, heartsick and saddened – but not surprised.

And every so often, the Cockroach Girl scrabbles from somewhere in the lair, unseen to everyone else and gazes at him reproachfully.


End file.
